Carving Out the Heart
by ImpalaLove
Summary: Otorisosa-kan's October Halloween-themed challenge. Set in season 9 sometime after episode 12, maybe some vague spoilers. "'It's Halloween, Sam.' Dean says it like this is an obvious explanation;like they have a tradition of celebrating the holiday filled with fictitious embodiments of the things they slaughter on a daily basis."


**Written for Otorisosa-kan's October Halloween-Themed Challenge. It's exactly what it sounds like: no specific prompt, just has to be Halloween-related.**

 **Set in season 9 sometime after episode 12 (though it might not make sense in terms of what month it would be then…but oh well, I'm taking some creative liberties here). Vague spoilers I suppose?**

 **Honestly, this started out as a nice, happy little story. Emphasis on 'started out,' because that did not work out at ALL. Oops. Happy (early) Halloween anyway!**

* * *

Carving Out The Heart

"Uh. What are those?"

Sam is leaning against the wall near the entrance of the bunker's kitchen, head tilted and arms crossed. He's been standing there for a few minutes now, trying to figure out how to open this conversation. Dean doesn't so much as flinch when his little brother's voice finally carries across the tiles.

"Don't ask questions you already know the answer to," he says. He is sitting at the small corner table in the kitchen with his back to Sam, not bothering to turn around as he speaks. He is busy examining the items in question, both of which have somehow fit on the table, along with an assortment of knives and tools scattered across the small surface. "Faux-idiocracy is unbecoming, especially on you, Stanford."

Dean hasn't called Sam "Stanford" in a long time, and Sam suppresses a loud sigh, opting instead for an eye-roll his brother can't see. Against his better judgment, Sam walks the rest of the way into the room, stepping around to the other side of the table so that he can get a clear view of the two monstrosities, in addition to his brother's expression.

"I know what they _are_ ," Sam clarifies, arms still crossed. "I just…why are they sitting on our table?"

Dean grins, letting the smile form slowly on his face, not as easy and effortless as it once was. He wipes his hands off on a small, white rag sitting on the table and pushes away from it, onto his feet. Clearing his throat, he spreads his arms out in a wide, sweeping gesture, encompassing the two enormous pumpkins sitting on the table. The end of the rag he still holds flops in his hand to wrap lazily around his fingers.

"It's Halloween, Sam." Dean says it like this is an obvious explanation; like they have a tradition of celebrating the holiday filled with fictitious embodiments of the things they slaughter on a daily basis. Like Halloween doesn't still tend to dredge up memories of Sam's last days with Jess or a clear image of his big brother's horrified expression as blood dripped steadily from Sam's nose and the body of Samhain lay at his feet.

"And?" Sam says, trying to keep the accusation out of his voice as best he can. Because Sam's never had neither the time nor patience for procedural cop shows, but he's pretty sure pumpkin carving is not on the list of things that partners do. And he'd made clear the terms of his return. Just partners. That's all they were now. And yet, as Sam watches Dean's face fall, he can do nothing to prevent the familiar ache that clutches stubbornly at his chest.

Dean seems unsure of what to say next, which is a rarity Sam has been seeing with more and more frequency since the day they had decided to hunt together again. Or rather, Sam had decided. Dean, on the other hand, just seems lost. He walks right over the broken pieces of what they used to be on a daily basis; doesn't see the ugly shards until it's too late, until they are embedded deep in the soles of his feet.

"I…I don't know," Dean shrugs, wincing as another one of those pieces pushes through the toe of his shoe. The rag in his hand dangles from the very tips of his fingers, as if about to fall. "We did this one year when you were little and Dad was away, you remember? You liked it. You had fun. Thought we could uh…do it again."

Sam remembers.

000000000oooooOoooooo00000000000000000

 _Sam shifted in his sleep, consciousness coming back with a slow heaviness reserved for days when Dad was away and sleeping in was tolerated by an older brother who would never tell. Rubbing his eyes, Sam glanced at the clock on the nightstand._

 _7:49am._

 _So then, something must've woken him. Sam stopped shifting beneath the covers and froze, listening. He noticed Dean's empty bed just in time for said previously missing brother to appear in the suddenly open doorway, lumbering clumsily over the threshold, dragging an enormous pumpkin in his wake. He grinned sheepishly when he caught sight of a bewildered Sam, but didn't stop moving until he had pushed the first pumpkin into the room, followed quickly by a second one._

" _Dean…"_

 _Dean stood before him with his two giant pumpkins, muddy and bruised but generally pleased with himself._

" _Look what I found, Sammy."_

" _Dean…"_

" _Do you wanna help me hollow them out or what?"_

 _Sam huffed an exasperated sigh, shaking his head. "Dean, I'm eleven. Pumpkin carving is for little kids. It's boring."_

 _Dean's smile faded slightly, but he worked to keep a small hint of it at the corner of his mouth._

" _Aw come on, pumpkin carving means knives. Little kids can't handle knives. But_ you _can. I taught you how. Whattya say?"_

 _Sam shook his head again, reaching for one of three books propped on the nightstand. He'd already read them all, but he pushed himself back against the headboard, opened to a random page, and began reading. Dean hesitated for a moment, but eventually shrugged and began hauling the pumpkins back outside. Sam could hear his frustrated growls from the pavement as he went to work gutting the pumpkins, only to return a few hours later with both of them ready to be carved._

 _Sam snuck curious glances over the pages of his forgotten novel, watching as Dean walked to the motel room's front closet and got an extra bed sheet, spreading it out on the floor of the room. He rolled both of the enormous pumpkins on top of the sheet, and then he sat with his back against his bed, staring at them._

" _What are you doing?" Sam asked after a while._

" _Thinking about what I wanna carve," Dean replied, not taking his eyes off of the pumpkin sitting in front of him._

" _This is stupid, Dean."_

" _No one's making you watch. Just go back to your book or whatever."_

 _But Sam didn't. Instead, he watched with fascination as Dean sat and stared at his pumpkin for close to an hour before finally picking up his knife. And Sam kept watching as Dean's hands moved slow and deliberate, carving out what seemed like random shapes into the skin of his pumpkin. It was a long time before the shape of the headlights began to make sense, before the rest of the Impala stared back at Sam in startlingly accurate detail._

000000000oooooOoooooo00000000000000000

Sam remembers that day not just for the few hours of distraction he got in eventually carving his own pumpkin (he'd chosen to do a cat's face, for some reason).

He remembers it mostly for the way Dean was when he was staring at that pumpkin.

There was no wendigo to hunt that day. No research to do or training to complete. There was just Dean and time and a blank canvas that needed filling; a raw possibility that Dean had somehow sculpted into a tiny masterpiece. Even at eleven years old, Sam had understood the significance of that, of creating something from nothing. It said something about his brother; all that time spent just looking. _Seeing_. It was a part of Dean rarely shown to the rest of the world, and Sam knew he was lucky to witness it. So yes, he remembers it. But standing in front of Dean now, Sam can't say any of that.

"I was eleven," Sam says instead.

He leaves Dean standing in the kitchen. He forgets to grab the bowl of cereal he came for in the first place. Just walks back to his room. He slams the door hard, almost wishing it would splinter and break the way everything else seems to have already done. Sam's eyes burn and he shakes his head against the ridiculous onslaught of memories he doesn't want anymore, the ones that make it almost impossible to keep this up for much longer. But Dean needs to understand. He needs to know how bad the damage is this time, how far over the line he's stepped. There is no going back to the way things used to be, and no matter how hard it is, Sam has to make Dean see the ugly, frayed edges that have been burned away.

Sam sighs, ignoring the rumbling in his stomach and settling back down onto his bed with a book. He guesses he will be here for most of the day now, unable to look Dean in the eye.

On the other side of that door, back down the hallway and through the entrance to the kitchen where the two giant pumpkins still sit on the table, there is a white rag lying limp and forgotten on the floor. Dean doesn't move to pick it up, doesn't even noticed he's dropped it.

The two pumpkins are an unrecognizable splatter of crushed, orange wreckage in the trees behind the bunker no more than twenty minutes later, and Dean is out of breath. Somehow, destroying yet another perfectly good thing hasn't made him feel even a tiny bit better. Dean walks back into the bunker and into his room.

He closes the door as gently as he can behind him.

* * *

 **Please leave your thoughts/comments if you have time! Also, feel free to PM Otorisosa-kan if you'd like to be involved in future challenges. Thanks for reading!**


End file.
